Career

In 1987 Hillenburg decided to pursue a career in animation, his second lifelong passion.

Hillenburg joined the Nickelodeon animated series as a writer, producer, and storyboard artist. While working on Rocko's Modern Life, Hillenburg became friends with Tom Kenny, who would later become the voice of SpongeBob, and future SpongeBob collaborators Doug Lawrence, Paul Tibbit and others.

He focused the show on a sponge, which Hillenburg initially drew as a natural sponge but changed to a square sponge because it looked funnier.

In 1997, Hillenburg teamed with some of his former "Rocko" colleagues, who helped design the show's backgrounds and characters.

SpongeBob SquarePants

While working at the Ocean Institute, Hillenburg wrote a comic book called "The Intertidal Zone". He showed it to Martin Olson, a friend and one of the writers of Rocko's Modern Life. Olson loved it and suggested that Hillenburg rewrite it as an undersea cartoon series.

In 1998, Hillenburg pitched the show to Nickelodeon, using an aquarium, character models, a theme song and the storyboard that would become the pilot episode, "Help Wanted."

The main character's name was originally "SpongeBoy", but since the name was copyrighted, he changed it to SpongeBob. Nickelodeon executives bought the pitch and the series premiered on May 1, 1999, and the following episodes started airing on July 17, 1999.

Karen, Plankton's computer wife on the show, is named after Stephen Hillenburg's wife.